The maxim that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is more true than ever in image based documentation of surgical procedures. There patients' lives and physicians' reputations are at stake. The early history of image based documentation is littered with crude attempts at utilizing photographic film to capture anatomical curiosities and groundbreaking surgical advances for teaching purposes. However, little attempt was made to provide documentation of routine cases. Average patients simply did not merit this special consideration.
With the advent of analog cameras coupled to fiber optics, physicians began displaying some surgical patient images on video monitors in the operating room. This was especially true in endoscopic surgeries where physicians peer inside patients' body cavities normally only viewable with open surgery. Attempts made to systematically record all patient procedures on videotape required large and cumbersome archives of videotapes.
Although analog cameras are still used, solid state image cameras coupled to endoscopes and other medical instruments are now standard. These cameras produce images in digital format. Such format allows convenient and efficient image transfer, review, and archival.
One method for archiving digital images is suggested in U.S. Pat. No. 6,067,075 to Pelanek. Therein, a workstation is disclosed for transferring and archiving patient images previously stored in the memory of diagnostic equipment. However, this method does not disclose contemporaneously saving images in a permanent location, meaning that the equipment is subject to “downtime” as data is extracted from its memory.
Once image data has been extracted and archived it must be made available to those in a position to best make use of it, the treating physician. Ironically in a circular manner, the person to whom eventual delivery of images is made is the same person who used the diagnostic equipment to record the images in the first place who must now await it being made available to him. Thus, it would be advantageous to the physician to have the data available at the conclusion of the surgical procedure or series of surgeries. Consequently, equipment downtime for data extraction also is eliminated increasing efficiency of equipment and facility utilization.
Image data availability, however, is only of value when the data can be read and images displayed readily. Thus, exotic and unusual methods of storing and reading image data chain physicians. Most convenient are displays in NTSC and PAL standards and devices that can play image data on these displays. NTSC is the common television standard in the U.S., while PAL standards predominate in Europe and in parts of Asia. Additionally, most convenient for medical personal, is for images and video to be viewable utilizing common off-the-shelf optical media players (i.e. set-top DVD players) and/or standard personal computers.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,045,955 to Ikeda discloses an apparatus coupled to a digital tape drive for recording and reproducing high-definition medical images having specific analog matrix exceeding that of NTSC or PAL standards. Typically, these images can only be produced by specialized imaging equipment and can only be viewed on highly specialized monitors. They are incompatible with NTSC or PAL standards and thus are inapplicable to the use of documenting procedures where analog or digital cameras provide a video signal to be displayed.
Other suggestions have been made to integrate images into a medical setting. Therein, imaging is primarily related to diagnosis rather than documentation; resulting in files solely consisting of visually relevant components and omitting narration by the treating physician.
Suggestions to incorporate equipment in surgical suites fail to consider issues relevant to logistics of placing equipment. Surgical suites include a plurality of equipment. Vertically stacking equipment in shelves, i.e. racking, advantageously conserves space. However, this limits the readily available user-operator access to front face plates. Equipment that incorporates space saving advantages while providing maximum user-operator access, therefore, is highly desired.
Therefore, what is desired is a device that produces and saves a surgical documentary recording file that incorporates both video and audio to a transportable and common media contemporaneously during the surgery.
What is also desired is a device that formats a video signal into a plurality of video formats for display, displays an image stream, and allows a user to capture still images and save same as a still graphic file to the same media as the documentary recording file.
It is further desired that the device and the parts that the user interacts with are convenient and accessible.
Also, it is desired that the device is capable of “feed through” of real-time video signals to a plurality of display devices, in a plurality of video formats, when the device is in a standby mode, when the device is off, or in the event when the device malfunctions.
Further, what is desired is an interactive tutorial which allows a user to manipulate the files saved.
These and other objectives are met by the embodiments of the present invention.